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Rise of the Machines

the lost history of cyberneticsThomas Rid

‘Rise of the Machines is strikingly original, compellingly written and deeply topical. It is a guide to our hopes and fears of robotics and computers. Thomas Rid weaves together technological innovation, social change and popular culture in a way that is both surprising and approachable.’

Gordon Corera, BBC Security Correspondent and author of Intercept

‘Rise of The Machines isn’t just an insightful history of Cybernetics, but also a fascinating journey with the 20th century thinkers — from tech giants and eccentric mathematicians to science fiction writers and counterculture gurus — who have shaped how we understand machines and ourselves.’

P.W. Singer, author of Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know and Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War

‘Thomas Rid has provided a gripping account of how after the Second World War, cybernetics, a theory of machines, came to incite anarchy and war half a century later. Thanks to his extensive research we can now read for the first time the real story of Moonlight Maze, the first big state-on-state cyber attack, setting a new narrative standard for historians and journalists alike.’

Sir David Omand, Director of GCHQ during Moonlight Maze, former UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator

‘Everyone I know should read this book. It will be a classic.’

Robert Lee, former US Air Force Cyber Warfare Operations Officer, author of SCADA and Me

‘Rise of the Machines is a fascinating history of cybernetics, and of the visionaries like Norbert Wiener who first imagined the potential — and peril — of machines that would begin to replicate the capabilities of the human mind. The ongoing story of our relationship with information technology has unfolded in often surprising ways — and its culmination may shape the future in ways that we can scarcely imagine.’

Martin Ford, author of Rise of the Robots

‘Sometimes the most important things are hiding in plain sight. At least that's what I concluded from Rise of the Machines, Thomas Rid's masterful blending of the art of a storyteller, the discipline of an historian and the sensitivity of a philosopher. Rise of the Machines unmasks how really disruptive this “cyber thing” has been and will continue to be to nearly all aspects of human experience. It's more than food for thought. It's a banquet.’

Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA

‘Technology at once defines and exceeds our hopes for the future; it transforms and escapes us. As Thomas Rid makes clear, we live in a world riddled with technological mythologies; where our relationships both with and through machines mould not only daily experience, but our collective unconscious. There can be few finer guides to the geographies of human fear and dreaming within our machine age.’

Tom Chatfield, author of Live This Book

‘Fascinating … An ingenious look at how brilliant and not-so-brilliant thinkers see — usually wrongly but with occasional prescience — the increasingly intimate melding of machines and humans.’

Bruce Sterling, New Scientist

‘Deftly recounts the hope, hype and fears that have accompanied our thinking on automation … Fascinating.’

Financial Times

‘A fascinating survey of the oscillating hopes and fears expressed by the cybernetic mythos.’

The Wall Street Journal

‘Thomas Rid aims to reconnect “cyber” to its original idea of man-machine symbiosis … Absorbing.’

John Naughton, The Observer

‘Rid guides us expertly from an eccentric mathematician’s idea to the advanced cyber world we live in today.’

How It Works

‘The major disruptions in our modern society all belong to one big story. A common theme connects war machines, computer networks, social media, ubiquitous surveillance and virtual reality. For 50 years or more the same people and the same ideas weave through these innovations united by the term cyber, as in cyberspace and cybernetics. Read this amazing history and you'll go: aha!’

Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired magazine, author of What Technology Wants and The Inevitable

A sweeping exploration of man’s relationship with machines, and the inventions and myths that shape our world.

As lives offline and online merge even more, it is easy to forget how we got here. Rise of the Machines reclaims the spectacular story of cybernetics, a control theory of man-and-machine and one of the twentieth century’s pivotal ideas.

Springing from the febrile mind of mathematician Norbert Wiener amid the devastation of World War II, the cybernetic vision underpinned a host of seductive myths of cyborgs, cyberculture, and cyberspace. Wiener’s scheme slowly transformed computers from machines of assured destruction to engines of brilliant utopias. Cybernetics, in turn, triggered blissful cults and martial gizmos, The Whole Earth Catalog, and the U.S. Air Force’s foray into virtual space. It continues to fuel anarchists and cyberwarriors today.

Drawing on unpublished sources including interviews with hippies, anarchists, sleuths, and spies, Rise of the Machines offers an unparalleled perspective into our anxious embrace of technology.

‘Rise of the Machines is strikingly original, compellingly written and deeply topical. It is a guide to our hopes and fears of robotics and computers. Thomas Rid weaves together technological innovation, social change and popular culture in a way that is both surprising and approachable.’

Gordon Corera, BBC Security Correspondent and author of Intercept

‘Rise of The Machines isn’t just an insightful history of Cybernetics, but also a fascinating journey with the 20th century thinkers — from tech giants and eccentric mathematicians to science fiction writers and counterculture gurus — who have shaped how we understand machines and ourselves.’

P.W. Singer, author of Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know and Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War

‘Thomas Rid has provided a gripping account of how after the Second World War, cybernetics, a theory of machines, came to incite anarchy and war half a century later. Thanks to his extensive research we can now read for the first time the real story of Moonlight Maze, the first big state-on-state cyber attack, setting a new narrative standard for historians and journalists alike.’

Sir David Omand, Director of GCHQ during Moonlight Maze, former UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator

‘Everyone I know should read this book. It will be a classic.’

Robert Lee, former US Air Force Cyber Warfare Operations Officer, author of SCADA and Me

‘Rise of the Machines is a fascinating history of cybernetics, and of the visionaries like Norbert Wiener who first imagined the potential — and peril — of machines that would begin to replicate the capabilities of the human mind. The ongoing story of our relationship with information technology has unfolded in often surprising ways — and its culmination may shape the future in ways that we can scarcely imagine.’

Martin Ford, author of Rise of the Robots

‘Sometimes the most important things are hiding in plain sight. At least that's what I concluded from Rise of the Machines, Thomas Rid's masterful blending of the art of a storyteller, the discipline of an historian and the sensitivity of a philosopher. Rise of the Machines unmasks how really disruptive this “cyber thing” has been and will continue to be to nearly all aspects of human experience. It's more than food for thought. It's a banquet.’

Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA

‘Technology at once defines and exceeds our hopes for the future; it transforms and escapes us. As Thomas Rid makes clear, we live in a world riddled with technological mythologies; where our relationships both with and through machines mould not only daily experience, but our collective unconscious. There can be few finer guides to the geographies of human fear and dreaming within our machine age.’

Tom Chatfield, author of Live This Book

‘Fascinating … An ingenious look at how brilliant and not-so-brilliant thinkers see — usually wrongly but with occasional prescience — the increasingly intimate melding of machines and humans.’

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AUTHOR

Thomas Rid

Thomas Rid is Professor in Security Studies at King’s College London. He received his PhD from Humboldt University in Berlin, and worked for ten years in leading think tanks in Berlin, Paris, Washington and Jerusalem. He is the author of four books, including War and Media Operations (2007) and Cyber War Will Not Take Place (2013). He lives in London. Follow him at @RIDT.